Mad World
by Domino Darkwolf
Summary: Dean struggles to find footing in reality in a life of delusions after Sam's self-sacrifice to stop the apocalypse. Only one person can save the hunter from the misery that consumes him. Short AU where essentially everything post season 5 has been an illusion in Dean's broken mind. Rated for darkness and mentions of suicide.


_Fair warning: this is not a happy fic. In fact, this is a terribly sad fic. If you like your stories to end happily, you should turn around and find another story to occupy your time with. If you're like me and thrive on unhappiness and darkness, I welcome you to this little tale. I hope you enjoy your stay, and would like you to know comments are encouraged (but not required)._

 _Special shoutout and expressions of deep gratitude to **celinenaville** for editing and offering her expertise. She happens to be a fantastic writer; if you're not familiar with her work, do yourself a favor and check her out._

 _Cheers!_

* * *

"Do you know where you are, Dean?"

Dean Winchester blinked. His jade eyes focused on the figure sitting on the opposite side of the oak desk, the man-shaped thing in the stiff white coat. Its hands were folded atop a leather-bound journal, its blue eyes giving the Winchester an expectant look. He wore a familiar face, a face Dean had seen before, years ago. The face of a dead man.

No, not a man. A dead _angel_.

The fair-haired man (or was it a _thing_?) raised his brows in a semi-patient skepticism. Dean blinked again as reality fitted its puzzle pieces together in his war-torn mind and he absorbed his surroundings; tall bookcases, wood paneling on cream walls decorated with framed certificates, a wide window that overlooked a green lawn dotted with trees. The picture came together when he noticed what he was wearing; thin blue pajama pants, a plain white t-shirt, and flimsy slippers. Dean glanced back up at the man across the desk, and gave him an empty smile.

"I'm at the funny farm," he quipped.

"And do you know who I am?" the man asked, his words accented with British pronunciations.

"Doctor Balthazar," Dean replied quietly.

The man smiled.

"Very good," he said, a praise that rang patronizing in Dean's ears. "Sounds like someone's having a good day."

Dean scowled and shifted uncomfortably in his chair while Dr. Balthazar opened the journal to a place near the back, and fixed a pair of black rimmed reading glasses over his eyes. Dean's fingers gripped the ends of the armrests, white-knuckling his way through the thorny silence that fell as the doctor studied the words penned onto the pages.

"Yesterday you let Rowena turn you into a spirit bomb designed to annihilate God's sister?" Balthazar said, peering above his spectacles to look at Dean, who grimaced. "We've been over this, Dean. Rowena is not a witch. She's—"

"Nurse Ratchet," Dean muttered. "I know."

Dr. Balthazar's eyes lingered on Dean for a moment before he returned to the pages.

Dean wished he could shrink down into nothingness. He wished he could transport himself to a parallel universe where everything in that journal had happened. _Was_ happening. He wished Castiel would answer his damned prayers and cure him of the shreds of sanity he couldn't shake or smite him; either would have suited the Winchester just fine.

"It looks like God's sister changed her mind before you could blow the both of you to smithereens," the doctor continued. "And God saved you from self destruction." He smiled, removed his glasses, and looked up at Dean. "That's encouraging. You had me worried with volunteering yourself to kamikaze, what was it?" Pause. Quick glance down. "The Darkness? It seemed very suicidal."

Dean parted his lips to argue it was a self sacrifice. To save the world. But pointing out the details of his delusions wouldn't help his case. It was bad enough people from reality filled his fictions. Balthazar seemed confident that what Dean wrote, what Dean thought he experienced, reflected his subconscious, and not just a life Dean wished he was living.

"Would you care to discuss these with me?" Balthazar asked.

"No," Dean said, swift and short. Dark.

Doctor Balthazar sighed and set his glasses atop the opened journal.

"You've been here for six years," he informed his patient. "Eventually you're going to have to open up."

Dean glared at Balthazar, a look that spoke of refusal. An expression that told of stubbornness and hopelessness.

A veil of thin patience cascaded over Balthazar's face, and his lips turned up in a trying smile.

"You're not going to get better if you keep quiet," he stated flatly. Dean scoffed.

"You told me I'm not getting better, anyway." Dean turned his head to look out the window at the blanket of gray clouds that hovered low in the sky. "What's the fucking point?"

Doctor Balthazar's tiny smile faded some degrees.

"It's true, some of our efforts to help you have had… unfortunate results," he admitted.

Dean rolled his eyes. He was lucid enough to remember the laundry list of medications they had tried to give him, and the role they undoubtedly played in his multiple suicide attempts.

"Which is all the more reason to make an effort to talk about what you're going through," Balthazar concluded. "Your therapist informs me you still refuse to talk to him."

"So?" Dean growled, spitting under his breath, "He killed Bobby."

"Richard Roman did not kill your uncle," Balthazar stated with an agitated calmness. Dean blinked. He rubbed his forehead, ran his hand across his perpetual five o'clock

shadow and turned his gaze down.

"I knew that," he said faintly. Flustered.

Doctor Balthazar examined his patient, still young in years yet old before his time. He was wilted, sucked dry by time and horror and misery. His shoulders were slumped, his spirit dimmed, casting him as a shadow of his former self.

"You do want to get better, don't you, Dean?" he questioned with a taste of suspicion in his tone.

Dean didn't reply. Not because of his relentless stubbornness, or the embarrassment that claimed his senses in moments of clarity. He knew the back and forth was exhausting, and it aggravated him that he couldn't find purchase in either delusion or reality. But, at the end of the day, he would choose complete madness. The sanity Doctor Balthazar offered was transient, and Sam was not in it. And Dean was not going to tell a psychiatrist he would prefer delusions to reality.

Doctor Balthazar nodded knowingly, but didn't bother to pry. Instead he closed the journal, picked it up and handed it to Dean. Dean snatched it up and stared down at the caramel surface, avoiding the eyes of his doctor.

"I'm going to keep you on the Symbyax for now," Balthazar told him decidedly. "It may help if you were to actually take it." He paused to give Dean a scolding look that was lost on the Winchester's disinterest. "I'll see you next week," he said, rising from his seat to signal their session was over. "Do try to make some friends today while you're feeling better."

Dean grumbled under his breath and sluggishly took his leave.

* * *

Dean walked with shadows and ghosts at his heels. They buffaloed the others, who sidestepped him in the long corridors and gave him wary glances. He watched them skirt around him, and felt the desolation in their avoidance.

He missed Charlie. Charlie hadn't been afraid. She had embraced him and the things that haunted him, and loved him in spite of everything.

Benny had been a good friend, too. Benny understood the blackness that surrounded Dean, and welcomed him as a comrade.

There had also been Kevin, who had been a nervous wreck but had, eventually, through therapy and Xanax, warmed up to, and befriended the Winchester.

But they were all gone. Discharged. Released back into the world to lead normal lives. To _live_. And Dean was still there.

Alone.

Painfully alive.

Dean Winchester saved the world, and all he got was a crippling loneliness and cruel illusions cut by truth that bit like hellhounds.

He shuffled to his square little room and gingerly sat on his bed, his movements rigid. Severe. As if it hurt just to breathe. Because, in some ways, it did.

He clutched his journal — his figmental life — to his breast and warily laid his head on his pillow. He stared up at the ceiling and thought briefly about Charlie. Benny. Kevin. The frigid, bony fingers of melancholy seized his heart as his thoughts strayed to Bobby. Castiel. His chest constricted as images of the people he used to know flashed across his memory until it felt like it was going to stop breathing altogether, and his mind stuck on Sam.

Sam. The brother who had sacrificed himself, body and soul, to save the world. The brother Dean struggled to live life without. The brother Dean should not have had to live without. Not after everything he had endured.

A single tear broke free from his eye and streaked down the side of his face. He hugged his book closer and drank in a struggled breath.

"Cas," he prayed, his voice a broken whisper. "Castiel. If you can hear me, please come… please help me." He closed his eyes. "Help me. Please." He gasped in another uncertain breath. "Take me away from here."

* * *

"I'm glad Dean has some family left." Balthazar's words were betrayed by the blasé expression arranged on his face, but the man with Pacific blue eyes didn't notice. He was preoccupied with scouting the halls and the rooms as they strolled side by side. "We thought his uncle had been his last living relative."

"Uncle?" the man asked, his voice gravely and puzzled.

"Bobby?" Balthazar said, arching a brow in skepticism.

"Yes," the man said, nodding. "Of course." And, when he sensed Balthazar's inquiring stares, added in a less than convincing manner; "Dean is my half brother. Bobby was not my uncle."

"I see," Balthazar said, doubtful but dispassionate. Pause. "You're in his delusions. Portrayed as an angel."

The man's expression remained flat at this news; there was no surprise, no interest or pain. The doctor may as well have informed him the sky was blue.

"What is my… _brother's_ diagnosis?" the man asked, looking to Balthazar for the first time since they left his office.

"Dean is suffering from a fairly aggressive form of psychotic depression and PTSD," the psychiatrist replied as they walked the linoleum laid corridors. "The good news is that his symptoms do not appear to be getting worse." He paused to nod his head at a nurse with fiery red hair and heavy eye makeup. "The bad news is he does not seem to be improving, either. We've tried him on dozens of medications and countless combinations of antidepressants and antipsychotics, as well as numerous rounds of electroconvulsive therapy, but he has been relatively unresponsive so far."

Doctor Balthazar halted at an open doorway, and the man followed suit, his trench coat swaying at the sudden stop.

"He's in there," Balthazar said, motioning through the threshold. "You've come on a good day. He shouldn't have any difficulty recognizing you're here."

The man nodded a silent _thank you_ at Balthazar, and they parted ways, the doctor continuing on down the hall as the man took a bold step into the little blue room.

Dean was lying on a small bed in the far corner of the room, his eyes sealed tight, his chest rising and falling with deep abdominal breaths. He was smaller than he used to be. Paler. Emptier.

A foreign sensation of guilt gnawed at the man's gut. Grief sunk into his muscles and laid upon his bones like a million little ships on the ocean floor. His grace ached to see the mortal, the once proud Dean Winchester, so shrunken and faded.

The man parted his full lips to speak, but nothing would come out. Until finally he choked out;

"Hello, Dean."

Dean remained motionless, save for the rising and the falling of his chest.

"Dean?" the man said, this time provoking a minute twinge. "Dean, it's me. Castiel."

Dean's eyes opened. He moved his head to take in the sight of the man, and gradually sat up, his face mystified.

"Cas?" he said in a voice barely above a whisper. He studied the figure with caution. "You're… you're really here, aren't you?" he said when he decided the vision was true.

"Yes," Castiel confirmed. He invited himself into the center of the room where he stood in discomfort, allowing Dean to survey him. Dean's confounded expression gradually gave way to wrinkles of heartache and betrayal, his green eyes shone wet as he looked up at the angel.

"Where have you been?"

"Earth, mostly," the angel replied. "Raphael banished me from Heaven. He broke my wings."

Dean blinked, unmoved by the angel's plight.

"I prayed to you," the Winchester choked, color rising to his cheeks with his words.

Castiel hung his head and sighed.

"I know."

"Why didn't you come?" Dean asked. Angry. Hurt. Exhausted.

Castiel opened his mouth to respond, but he couldn't find an explanation that would give his friend comfort. Instead he offered a small smile and said;

"I'm here now."

Pre-apocalypse Dean would have been furious at the remark. He would have demanded an answer, _the_ answer, and God help the questioned if the response wasn't to the Winchester's liking. Post-apocalypse Dean, post- _Sam_ Dean, was indifferent. He was too broken to care. Too desperate to give a shit about anything, except;

"Can you make it stop?"

Castiel shuffled forward, his shoulders slumped, his skin cold with dread. The matress springs creaked at the added weight when he gently sat beside his old friend. He reached out and placed his hand on Dean's right shoulder. His eyes found difficulty in meeting Dean's, and lingered on the tiny space between them for a long, silent minute. A breath of courage filled the angel's chest, and he finally looked into the defeated face of Dean Winchester.

"Yes."

Dean did not cry out when the silver blade pierced his chest. His eyes widened with surprise, locked on Castiel's solemn face as the angel pushed his weapon through Dean's body to the hilt. He gasped. A tear slid down his face, and a faint smile twitched at the sides of his lips.

"Thank you," he whispered before his body turned limp, and he swayed forward.

Castiel caught him with his left hand – his right still wrapped around the hilt – and coaxed him back, softly laying his head on the white pillow. The angel dislodged his blade from the hunter's chest, wincing at the wet sound it made. At the blood that latched onto Dean's shirt. At the shallowness of Dean's breath.

The angel witnessed the hunter's final breath draw in and release in a haunting sigh, watched the warmth drain from his face and his skin turn to winter. He saw the light in his jade eyes snuff out, felt the exit of his soul. And in the hollowness of the room, he began to tremble.

He knew in his heart that what he'd done was right. That he had not so much as brought death upon his friend as he had given him peace. Why, then, did his chest ache? Why was his body and his grace suddenly so heavy?

The why of the weight and the woe struck him as he stood to take his leave, and it sent a shiver cascading around his shoulders. Dean had been dead for years, but now he was gone. And Castiel would never, ever see him again.


End file.
